The Convergence Newsletter - School of Journalism and Mass ...

gives us the freedoms to make those determinations. It may stretch the
constitutional analogy, but Newsplex, too, is a liberating entity. It does
not tell us how to cover the news or launch a media campaign. It gives us
the facility to approach the information and communication processes with
great liberty to exploit the technology without being tethered by it.
Charles Bierbauer, Dean
College of Mass Communications and Information Studies
University of South Carolina
NEWSPLEX NEWS
With the completion of Newsplex in November 2002, Columbia, South Carolina,
U.S.A. became an official destination on the convergence map of the world.
Professional and academic visitors have flocked to the new facility,
officially christened the Ifra Newsplex at the University of South Carolina,
for tours and educational presentations. Visitors in May and June included
PBS President and CEO Pat Mitchell, Deputy Editor in Chief of the Austrian
daily newspaper Die Presse Michael Fleishhacker, reporter Pascal Riche from
the Parisian newspaper Liberation, Assistant Managing Editor Paul Osmundson
and interns from the South Carolina daily The State and Dr. Jane Singer from
the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Iowa.
The Newsplex staff also welcomed editors Svitlana Vyshnevsha, Oksana
Ryabchun, and Anatoliy Drozdyk from the RIA Group, a Ukrainian multimedia
company and their host, Editor Terry Plumb from the Rock Hill, South
Carolina Herald, as well as thirty production managers and technical staff
members from Japanese newspapers as part of the Conference for Newspaper
Techniques-Japan (CONPT) tour of the U.S. Newsplex Director Kerry Northrup
also conducted a highly successful live teleconference tour of the facility
for publishing executives in France that was sponsored by Agence France
Presse and Ifra South West Europe in Paris.
Training has also begun in the facility. In early March ten editors and
subeditors from the Manchester Evening News of the U.K. were the first group
of professionals to take advantage of the convergent newshandling training
offered by Ifra. Since that time, Directorate members Groupe Edipresse of
Lausanne, Switzerland and the Florida Times-Union of Jacksonville, a Morris
Communications paper, have sent teams to Newsplex for Newsplex Roles
training and instruction in other multiple media newshandling techniques.
Directorate member PR Newswire sent a group of managers to Newsplex for a
two-day executive briefing earlier this year as well.
Seminars and training sessions open to all are also being offered. The
University of South Carolina's College of Mass Communications and
Information Studies will hold Newsplex Summer Seminar on Teaching and